Oh my goodness! Don't blink or you are going to miss the end of January! February is only 2 days away, which at my house means that it is time for 14 days of love! At our house we give each other (read: I give the kids) 14 days of cute little notes and treats in their special mailboxes leading up to Valentine's day. Don't worry the Mr. isn't left out. We make him goodies and cards too. (He just doesn't have a special mail box.)

Anyways, Jo at Home, James has some beautiful prints to giveaway to one lucky member! Jo is actually originally from Iowa and we thought it would be awesome for one of you to win something made by an Iowan to help you remember your awesome times here with us! (Also, I think Jo might have felt bad that we are here freezing our booties off since she has moved and doesn't have to freeze the winter away anymore)

Jo has 2 beautiful prints that go perfectly together. There is this cute quote that says "Together is our favorite place to be" . She also has created this cute heart with an arrow that hold you and your special someone's initials and you can personalize the quote at the bottom to say everyone in your family's name or Cody loves Ashley (That's what mine would say). So cute! And perfect for Valentine's Day.

To enter to win this cute giveaway leave me a comment telling me what background you would pick for your print. I love the Be Mine chevron or the grey Quatrefoil. So pretty! Giveaway closes Monday morning at 10:00 AM.

We have a new blog segment for you all today. We have asked some Medical Partner's Alumni to write posts for us about life after residency. We thought this would be a great way for all of us on the journey of medicine to not only have something to look forward to in the years ahead, but to also help us connect with other people in different stages of the medical journey. So without further ado I give you our first post of Diary of a Doctor's Wife.

Life After Residency

During our 5 years of General Surgery residency, I often wondered what life would be like when we were finished. We couldn’t wait to be done and move on with the “it gets better” part of life. Then, my husband decided he wanted to do a fellowship! “It gets better” would have to wait one more year, but there was no way I was going to try to persuade him not to do it. If that is what he wanted, I was there to support him. Actually, I was very excited because I knew this was only for one year. It was going to be an adventure! Our then 6 month old daughter and I had a one year vacation (as I called it) in Tampa, FL while my husband worked 80+ hours a week for his Bariatric Fellowship. It was brutal for him! I thought he was never home during residency and all the sudden he was home even LESS! He was on call every other week, for seven days straight, that whole year! Talk about exhausting! I felt bad for him. We were in a beautiful part of the country, with the beach at our fingertips and he was so tired he rarely had time to do anything fun. But don’t let our experience deter you from encouraging your spouse if he/she wants to do a fellowship. They aren’t all that brutal. Now, we look back at that blur of a year and cherish our experiences and the memories we made there.Currently, we are PGY...oh wait, he’s an ATTENDING! Life is finally at the “it gets better” phase of life and I can say, it truly is better. Well worth the wait! My husband is on call one day a week, and one weekend a month. Night and day compared to what we were used to. He goes in at about 7am and gets home around 6pm. His schedule is fairly predictable.We now have time to have lunch dates where he can actually show up and not leave me hanging at the hospital entrance (or sitting in my car outside). Who knew that would happen!? We also have time for date night, weekend getaways, and real vacations! And even better, he gets paid a real salary! Woo hoo! Some things didn’t change; long hours, pager going off at mid-night, hubby falling asleep two minutes after he gets home, typing up his notes at home every night, etc. But nothing is at the degree it was in residency and fellowship.Even though life is much better, there will always be a certain degree of stress at this stage because now, every patient he sees is ‘his’ patient, not an attending ‘above’ him like in residency. If something goes wrong in surgery, there is no one else to take over. Life is real now!

Written by Elana Liu, Iowa Medical Partners member from 2010-2012 and married to Danny a former General Surgery Resident.

Happy Friday! I hope you all had a great week and are looking forward to the weekend! Today I have an awesome giveaway for you. Kristi at SisterDoodles has send a super cute Iowa shirt for one lucky person.

This black and white baseball style tee is super soft and comfy. The Iowa decal is black and mine has gone through the wash several times and is holding up great. If any of you are interested in getting one for yourselves, you should head over to SisterDoodles Etsy shop and pick one up. Kristi also has all sorts of cute vinyl that you can order. Go and check her out!

If you would like to enter to win this cute Iowa shirt leave me a comment telling me what your favorite thing about Iowa is. This giveaway will close Monday at 10:00 AM. Good luck!

Year Round Wreath

We've all heard the line "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams," unfortunately, that is not an accurate description of life with a resident. (Unless you're comparing it to med school!) To help make up for the fact that funds are limited at our house, I end up making a lot of our décor. One of my favorite projects is my front door wreath.

I decided to make it very neutral so it would go with seasonal décor easily. I bought a grapevine wreath from a craft store (with a coupon, of course) and some cute burlap ribbon. I also found a B (for Breinholt) and some cute burlap flowers. I kept it simple by wrapping the wreath with the ribbon and then added the letter and flowers off-centered at the bottom.

I wanted a way to make my wreath change with the seasons since it is always up. I decided to use a thin jute string and made a tiny banner for each season. That was way easy and cheap. Because the banners are so small I can use one piece of paper for each one and then either use markers to add accents or stickers.

I love that I don't have to clutter up my storage room with several different wreaths and I love that I can change out one little thing on my wreath that makes it work all year long. Go make yourself a wreath and share what you created!

You Just Can't Win

How many times have you started a conversation with your Doc about how tired, stressed, sore, hungry, etc. you are only to have them not only one up you, but totally squash you by reminding you of the load they carry?

This type of conversation happens a lot at my house. The Doc will come home from work and some times I just can't stop myself from saying "I am so exhausted!" He is nice enough to patiently listen as I raddle on about how the kids made mess after mess that I had to clean up, and nap time was a disaster because of this or that, and I barely had time to clean the house, and everything else that I whine about on a regular basis. And then when I'm done he will casually say "Yeah I'm pretty tired too. I had to wake up at 5 to get to the hospital early enough to set up my room for surgery before we had lecture and then I had 9 surgeries." Game. Set. Match!

It doesn't matter what the subject is, he can always top my issues. Its a very humbling conversation and it also makes me very grateful that he is the one with that kind of stress and I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I think there are some very stressful and draining things that wives and moms go through. I am very lucky to know that the DR listens and offers support to me while dealing with his own struggles. Go and give your Doc a hug and maybe a free pass the next time they try to sleep in or take a nap (which they hopefully do in a funny position so you can take a picture to make you smile forever) and remember that no matter how many times you have this conversation, you will lose.

Our NICU Service Project Review

This year, Iowa Medical Partners donated care packages to mothers on bed-rest due to high-risk pregnancy, and mothers of infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the University of Iowa Hospital. These bags were filled with a few items for the baby, and items for the moms- nail polish, socks, lip-gloss, etc. We filled these bags with donations from various businesses from around the country, as well as internationally! Iowa Medical Partners members also donated items and spent many hours hand making items to put inside. We hope that these bags will be a reminder to these mothers that they haven't been forgotten, and will help them get through the long days and nights ahead with a little more hope than they had yesterday.

The members of Iowa Medical Partners did so much to see this project through. We had a big Saturday event where we made cards for the bags and sewed and tied blankets. It was so fun to get our hands dirty and put our hearts into the project.

4Moms sent us a truck load of Mamaroos and we were blown away! They were delivered a little earlier than we were expecting so there was a mad dash to get them out of the loading bay at Emily's work (Thank You South Slope for allowing us to use your loading dock). The site of floor to ceiling Mamaroos was breathtaking. Thank you 4Moms!

On top of the generosity of 4Moms, we had amazing companies from all over the world donating items to our project. We received adorable onesies, cute blankets, the most precious knit hats (Ali's mom and our member Jamie made sure that each baby got at least one), fun scarves for the moms, beautiful hand stamped Mom necklaces, boutique style bags, and so many other things that made this project complete. We were so blown away by the generosity of the companies that donated. Everyone we talked to was so supportive and went out of their way to help us reach our goals. There is a list of every company that donated as well as a link to their shop if you would like to check them out and shop for yourselves.

Our goal was to make 85 of these filled bags for these mothers and we reached that goal! We hoped to raise at least $1,500, and we blew that out of the water with our total donations received reaching $1,730. We used the money to purchase any items for the bags that we were short on, gift cards to the Java House and hospital cafeteria, and gas gift cards.

This project received some amazing publicity. It was so neat to see our project in the paper and on the news. Here are some of the news paper clippings and the news coverage from KCRG in Iowa City.

Time seemed to fly up to the delivery day for this project. We couldn't believe when it was time to load up the truck and head to the hospital. We had some wonderful members who came and helped us load up all of those Mamaroos and a bag for each family. Not to mention the Boppy pillows and covers for the NICU and the Bumbo for the NICU. Because we had so much help we had the truck all loaded in less than an hour. Then the evening of the 23rd Ali and Ashley jumped in the Uhaul to make the delivery. We had so much help from the nursing staff and our members when it came to unloading the truck. We set up the room and got ready for the families.

Getting to talk with the families in the NICU and hearing about their beautiful babies was the best part of this project. Letting these families know that we care and that we want them to have a happy holiday even though they are in a not so happy situation was a great way to kick off Christmas for us. We heard over and over again how grateful everyone was for this project and for all of the hard work that went into it. This project started as just an idea and turned into an act of love, sleepless nights, tears (of gratitude from the overwhelming response), and hope for these families.

We want to extend a HUGE thank you to all of our donors. This project happened because of you and your willingness to help these families. Thank you to the members of Iowa Medical Partners for donating items for the bags and your time and skills to this project. You all helped in so many ways! Thank you to our donors on our Fundly page. Your donations helped us complete this project and helped support these families in countless ways. This project went above and beyond what we ever hoped it would be and we just cannot say thank you enough. We are so excited for next year, to be able to bring some Merry to a whole new batch of Mommies.

Brrr! It's definitely winter in Iowa! Lenee at Girly Bowtique has sent a super cute, and super warm headband for one lucky member! This headband is brown knit, thick, and really comfy. I love that it is brown so it will go with pretty much anything. If you are in need of a new winter headband go and check out Girly Bowtique. They have lots of cute colors to choose from.

To enter to win this headband leave a comment telling me what color headband you would order. For an extra entry go and like Girly Bowtique's Facebook page and leave me a separate comment telling me you did that. Giveaway will close Monday at 10 AM.

Is the cold making anyone one else go crazy? I've been going stir crazy (and so have the kids!) so I went to good ol' Google to find some fun things to try. I thought I would share the ones that we really loved!

Make Your Own Snow

Did you know you can make your own snow by throwing boiling water in the air when the temperature is extremely low (like today!)? I used a measuring cup and boiled some water in the microwave. This was one of those experiments that I had to do and the littles had to watch because I didn't want them to get burned. They thought it was pretty dang cool.

Ice Bubbles

For this we just took regular bubble solution and blew them up into the air. By the time they hit the deck they froze. Another hit with the kiddos. It was even more fun because they could actually participate and not just watch.

Syrup Candy

I got this idea from people who got the idea from Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Little House in the Big Woods. (You know she lived in Iowa for a while as a child right?) You are supposed to use real Maple Syrup for this experiment (you can find some recipes here and here) but I'm not going to the grocery store while its this cold out so I just used good old Mrs. Butterworth. I filled a pie plate with clean snow and poured hot syrup in the dish and then let it sit for 30 minutes. We ended up with frozen syrup that I had to dig out of the dish. It wasn't taffy like but maybe that's because I didn't use maple syrup. It was pretty much just like eating plain syrup just not sticky. I may have to try it again with real syrup.

Snow Ice Cream

We didn't try this one today but we have made it in the past and its fun. (Its not quite as good as regular ice cream but how fun is it to say you made ice cream out of snow?!). The easiest thing to do is put a big casserole pan or baking dish outside when it is snowing or if you have a place where you have fresh, CLEAN snow go scoop some up. You need about 8 cups of snow. Then just mix it with a can of sweetened condensed milk and a teaspoon of vanilla. Easy peasy!

Hope you all are staying warm and that you're enjoying this winter weather. (And if you're not its only bad for a few more weeks, like 10.)

Let's talk about snow. That kind of feels like a bad 4 letter word right now doesn't it? I woke up this morning to find that the Doc, in his rush to get to work bright and early this morning, decided to just drive over the snow that was in our driveway and leave perfect smooshed tire tracks from the garage to the street. That meant that this morning, while trying to feed and dress 4 children before the start of school, I got to go shovel the driveway and chip off his perfect tire tracks that had frozen to the driveway. (Don't worry, he got a super nice thank you text for leaving me the nice present!)

Tonight during this beautiful snowfall we are having, after putting 4 crazy kids to bed, I busted out the snow blower to try to avoid the tire track incident from this morning being repeated tomorrow morning. All I have to say is, thank goodness for snow blowers! They make cleaning up the driveway so much easier. Just make sure you always wear proper shoes. Lets just say snow blowing the driveway in my running shoes last winter didn't go so well. I ended up almost flipping the snow blower over on myself when I slipped going up the driveway. Oops.

Now tell me I'm not the only Resident's wife who spends more time clearing out the snow than your Doc during the winter! Stay warm and safe out there.

I have a great company to tell you about today. It's A Love Hat Relationship is a custom, handmade hat company run by Sarah. She makes each hat and is so talented. You need to go and check out all of the hats she has made! Seriously talented!

Sarah made a beautiful Queen Elsa for my little princess. It is so perfect. The yarn is so soft and its very well made. Rilyn has just been in heaven wearing it around. I may have borrowed it for a picture. Shh! Don't tell her.

Sarah sent us a super cute Iowa hat to giveaway to one lucky member! This hat is just too cute. Seriously, you may have to fight me for it!

To enter the giveaway go to It's A Love Hat Relationship and look around, then, leave me a comment telling me what hat is your favorite. For an extra entry "Like" her page and leave me a separate comment telling me that you did. This giveaway will close Monday at 10 AM.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here is what you have to look forward this month with Medical Partners. Hope to see you at the events!January 6th - Tuesday - 9:30-11:00, Play Group at Scanlon Gym ($1.50 per child)January 6th - Tuesday - 6:30, Book Club "Mortom" by Erik Therme at Missa Uhlman's houseJanuary 7th - Wednesday - 10:30, Children's Activities at Synergy Gymastics (there will be a small fee per child)January 17th - Saturday - 6:30, Tundi's "Sip, Snacks, and Sell (or Buy) Your Home" night at the Iowa Children's MuseumJanuary 18th - Sunday - Noon, SOS and Entertainment Club Brunch at Iowa River Power Restaurant ($10 per person)January 23rd - Friday - 9:30-11:00, Play Group at Scanlon Gym ($1.50 per child)January 25th - Sunday - 12:00-2:00, Philanthropy at Salvation Army